A miscellany like Grandma’s attic in Taunton, MA or Mission Street's Thrift Town in San Francisco or a Council, ID yard sale in cloudy mid April or a celestial roadmap no one folded—you take your pick.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

“My Hero”

[If you’ve followed Barbie Angell’s poetry here or elsewhere, you know that Shel Silverstein is indeed her poetic hero. I love this tribute Barbie wrote to him, & while she never illustrated it, we do have a photo of the man himself. If you’d like to read Barbie’s own thoughts about Shel, please visit her site & check out this post!]My Hero

The sidewalk’s slowly cracking now.The attic light has dimmed.The giving tree gaveall the poems she saved.The bearded man’s moaning a hymn.The sun is going down again,and the rain is coming in.And we search the groundfor the perfect soundand we wonder where we’ve been.

What common thought has captured us?Who pulls the fraying thread?And what can we sayof ourselves today,when our bodies are finally dead?

And all of our eyelids are leaking.And our ears softly beg for a rhyme.‘Cause all that we needis a moment to grieve,in an endless allotment of time.

Where is our singing savior now?Who took him away from our world?His poems now restin his last precious breath,in tears of the boys and the girls.

I’ve lived inside his shadow now,for this lifetime that I’ve had.And his words and art,from my very start,have distinguished the good from the bad.

I pray for a new man to follow,to lead me the way of my dreams.A genius of meter.A brilliant new leader.As my hopes start to break at the seams.

‘Cause Shel paved the sidewalk for writers,and the gifts that he gave are unchanged.And I can’t let it go,since nobody knows,how to mop up the tears in my brain.

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE

All original text, music & pictures are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Please feel free to use them (not for profit) as long as you acknowledge the source & make them available under similar "share-alike" terms. This includes all works by John Hayes, Eberle Umbach (including original works by The Alice in Wonder Band, Five & Dime Jazz & The Bijou Orchestrette), Audrey Bilger, Brittany Newmark, L.E. Leone, Barbie Dockstader Angell, Nancy Krygowski, Carmen Leone, Mairi Graham-Shaw, AK Barkley, John Hayes, Sr., Sheila Graham-Smith & any other original work as may appear here down the line (we're hoping!)